Saturday, December 31, 2016

“Begone with you! Get out from
under my feet! Useless brat, you’re always in my way!”

These shouts, and more
besides, which she didn’t stop to hear, pursued her down the street as she fled
from the home she shared with her father and stepmother and her stepmother’s
two very young children. It was always the same these days. Since her father
had remarried she was constantly told that she was a “useless lump of a girl”,
and “no help to anyone.” She tried hard to be a help, she really did, rocking
the babies when they cried, fetching things she was asked to fetch, but
somehow, the minute she felt her stepmother’s eye upon her, it would suddenly
turn into disaster – something would be dropped or spilled or knocked over, and
it was all her fault. She never seemed to get things right, and was obviously a
bitter burden to the woman who was her new mother. Gone were the long days
playing in the streets with her friends, or the gentle lessons with her mother;
her mother had caught a sudden fever and died within two days, and, after a
period of desolation, her father had been talked into another marriage. She
felt like she had lost both her parents, since her father seemed to drift along
these days like an empty man, and hardly seemed to notice her existence.

But there was bustle and
hurrying in the village this afternoon. She had no idea what was happening, but
she followed the crowd to find out. Any excitement was better than sitting down
in the dust feeling sorry for herself. She had learned the hard way that it was
better not to ask adults too many questions. That only led to being noticed
when she didn’t want to be. So she listened hard and learned that somebody
called Jesus was just down the road and people were going out to meet him. She
had no idea who he was, but figured he must be someone important if half the
village thought it worth stopping their daily work to see him. She noticed some
of the mothers snatching up their littlest children and taking them along. She
trailed after them, keeping out of the way as best she could, but making sure
she didn’t get left behind.

But it seemed it was all for
nothing. When they reached the crowd up ahead and some of the women rushed
forward with their babies, as if they specially wanted the man to see their
small children (why?), a group of burly fishermen stepped forward and told them,
quite roughly, to go away and leave the master in peace. He had better things
to do than be bothered with a bunch of little kids!

It all felt so horribly
familiar that she felt the tears stinging at the corners of her eyes. She was
about to wipe them away with her grubby hands when another voice cut through,
and the crowd was suddenly silent. She would spend the rest of her life
wondering whether that voice was heartbreakingly sad or so full of joy that it
felt like the very stars were skipping. Maybe there was a place where deep pain
and deep joy met together? “Let the children come,’ he said, “and don’t try to
stop them. The Kingdom of God belongs to ones like these.”

At those words the men
stepped back and the women pressed forward with their children in their arms.
And the girl stood where she was, trying to see what was happening, but too
scared to come any closer. Then the crowd started to clear in front of her. She
looked up and saw him, and he saw her, and beckoned her forward with a gesture. Not stopping to think about it, she ran
forward straight into his arms. He held her close, and she had never felt so
loved, so safe. He looked up at the crowd and said softly, “Truly I say to you,
unless you receive the Kingdom of God like a child, you shall not enter it.”

Tuesday, December 06, 2016

See the old man, and the boy, growing up, but still a child,
wide-eyed with wonder. He is the most dearly loved of children, the only son of
his mother; the child of a miraculous conception when she was long past her
fertile years. And he is precious to his father also, for in this child, Isaac,
this child of laughter, rest all the promises of God that he would make from
the seed of this one man a mighty nation, even though he has only one
right-born son, this one, born years after all reasonable hope had faded from
the world. And now, here they are, walking side by side, and between them is a
donkey, loaded with firewood. Two young servants walk behind them, carrying the
provisions for the journey and a pot of fire.

But now they have come to a parting of the ways. Ahead lies
the mountain they have been journeying towards for three days. The old man
instructs the servants to remain there with the donkey, then he and his son
begin the ascent, carrying the wood and the fire-pot. At his father’s gesture,
the young man walks in front. He does not know that his father is greedy for
every remaining second that he can fix his eyes on his son. For he knows, as
the boy does not, that God has commanded him to kill his son on an altar there,
and make of him a burnt offering. And when the boy asks him where the sacrifice
is, he can only reply, with heavy-hearted faith, that God will supply a lamb.

But he does not know the deep truth of his own words. For his
son will not die upon that mountain. Instead, God has already provided a lamb
to die in his place, a sheep caught in a thicket to be offered up on his
behalf.

2.

See the women walking in the soft grey light that precedes
the dawn. There is no laughter between them, and few words, for their hearts
are in deepest mourning for the One who has just died, the One on whom they had
pinned all their hope, believing that in Him the promises of God would be
finally fulfilled. But no, it was not to be, he was crucified on a hill three
days ago, and the sky turned dark at his dying, and all joy fled from their
world. And now they go to perform the last act of kindness, the one which the
dead cannot feel, but which has been, for centuries, the ritual of grieving
women, and their last chance to look upon his tortured face. Their eyes blur
with tears, and they do not hide their pain from one another.

They do not yet know that, upon the mountain, God has
provided a lamb to die in their place, and that the Father Himself had to watch
His Son die as a sacrifice. They do not yet know that he is the firstborn of
many, that from his death a whole new people will be born, a multitude no man
can number, from every tribe and nation and language upon the earth.

And they do not yet know that they will find the tomb empty,
and the Beloved restored to undying life. For they do not yet know that He is
not dead, for he is risen.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Grandmother’s house had always been her safe place. There was
no shouting here, no clash of angry voices, and no sudden tummy pains that she
needed to keep to herself so as not to get their furious attention.
Grandmother’s house had a glorious old garden, with a clump of banana trees
that was perfect for hide and seek, and an old glasshouse full of plants that
nobody had looked after since her grandfather died, but somehow they kept on
living in that damp, quiet place, where the air was so heavy with the smell of
wet soil that it was always a little bit hard to breathe. She always expected
that one day magic would happen there, it was so different to the dry, dusty
back yard of her own house, where a just a few bushes clustered by the fence,
bushes with bright berries she had been warned never to eat.

And now she was going to grandmother’s house. She huddled in
the back seat, hard up against the window she could barely see through, and
tried to block out the sound of her father swearing at every other car on the
road. Her mother had refused to come; “No Michael, you take her. Your mother
never wants to see me anyway!” but she knew from the suitcase filled with her
stuff that had been thrown in the boot, that this time she would be staying for
a while. That made her happy. She thought of grandmother’s scones, with real
strawberry jam, and all the old story books that she was just learning to read,
and the nightlight shaped like a fish that grandmother left shining by her bed
all night long. It was so peaceful.

There was a soft rain falling as they arrived, and her father
impatiently chivvied her up the steps. He hated getting wet. But inside it
smelled of fresh baking and old roses, and she relaxed. She curled up in the
corner of the couch with Grandmother’s big fairy tale book, absorbed in the
pictures: the fairies, the princes, the dark forests, the castles and the
ridiculous frog with a crown on page 33. He always made her laugh.

The phrases from the adult conversation washed over her,
half-heard: messages from another country she had little interest in. “The
bitch!” (that was her father’s voice, followed by Grandmother’s hushing – she
hated rough language) There were a few minutes of subdued conversation, before
his voice was raised again. She was taking no interest, but some bits stuck in
her memory, to be replayed when she was older, and trying to make sense of it
all:

“Take no more!”

“More than flesh and blood can stand!”

“No, I’m done. But she’ll be safe here, look after her.”

“Send money when I can,”

Then he was gone, with a brief prickly good bye, and she was
sitting at the table with Grandmother, eating chocolate cake.

Friday, November 25, 2016

“We’ve done it!” There
was exultation in the words, and not a skerrick of guilt. She put down the axe, which would have to be
cleaned, of course, and looked at the blood on her hands. How had she managed
that? It had seemed such a clean kill.

Oh well, put it down to inexperience. After all, it wasn’t as
if she’d ever done it before, and it wasn’t exactly something you went round
practising, was it? But, before they did anything else, she would have to wash
her hands. She spared a passing thought for Lady Macbeth, who had been so upset
she couldn’t get her hands clean. All that emoting over bloodstains on her
hands! She had found Shakespeare ridiculously over-the-top at the best of
times, (such a waste when she could have been learning something more practical
at school!), but Lady Macbeth was the limit. Didn’t they have any soap in
ancient Scotland?

Ah, that was better! At least she had soap and running water.
Now the next job was to hide the evidence and dispose of the body. Geoff was
already straightening up the yard, just as they had planned, and she knew he
had been working on the wire for the last couple of days. It had to look like
it had been worn and pushed aside, it mustn’t look like they had cut it. People
had sharp eyes; it was really important to get the details right. That was how
you got away with things without anyone suspecting.

She glanced at the sky. Not long now till daylight – time to
keep moving along. Yes, even if it had made more mess, she was glad she had
used the axe. Strangulation, she believed, was the more usual method, but that
would have involved touching it, and she wasn’t sure she had the strength to
carry it through. Imagine the noise, the outcry, if something had gone wrong!
And the possibility of escape! No, there was far too much risk of discovery
that way. It was much better the way they had gone about it, even if Geoff,
always squeamish, had insisted on leaving the actual killing to her. And
MacGregor, infuriating, prying, lecturing neighbour that he was, wouldn’t be back
till Monday to make the discovery. And by then the evidence would be disposed
of and the trail gone cold.

Relief washed over her again. No more screaming in the middle
of the night, no more arguments with neighbours. And nobody would be able to
prove a thing. There would be gossip and speculation of course, but they could
easily add a few speculations of their own. Hadn’t they thought they’d seen a
tall man skulking around the laneways in the dusk? And couldn’t MacGregor use
the insurance money?

Now she just had to dispose of the body. It looked pathetic
lying there, as if it had been deflated. Was this sad, skinny specimen the one
who had been wrecking their night’s sleep for weeks and driven them to the
point of madness? Well, the feathers could be burnt, and as for the rest … She
picked up MacGregor’s rooster with one hand and eyed the sorry carcase. “I
think I’ll make chicken noodle soup,” she said.

Saturday, November 19, 2016

He tilled the ground, grumbling at the thorns and thistles.
His parents said it had not always been like that, and he more or less believed
them. But it was odd, just the same. After the tilling came the sowing, and
then the watching of the crop, and the dealing with the weeds. (Why had his
parents … ? Oh, never mind!) Finally it was time for the harvest, and all the hard
work of getting it gathered in. And all the while he watched his brother with
resentment. While he was labouring
bitterly over his crops, his brother would take out his flock, and sit and rest
all day. Sure he watched over them, but really, in this land that still carried
vague memories of Eden, it wasn’t that hard. The very weeds that Cain had to
battle with were food for Abel’s flocks. It simply wasn’t fair! He had no idea
that all the while he was diligently sowing his crops, another kind of seed had
taken root in his own soul.

Then the day came to make an offering to the Lord. He knew
his brother would willingly have given him from his own flock to make the
sacrifice (perhaps in exchange for a small portion from his crops), but he was
having none of it. He would not engage in that messy, blood-soaked business
(how demeaning!), and he would not be beholden to his spoilt brat of a younger
brother either. No, the work of his own hands was quite good enough to offer to
the Lord!

So he came, bearing a portion from his crop to make his
offering – not too large a portion, for that crop had cost him a lot of effort
and he was entitled to the fruit of his labours! His brother came also, bearing
the fat portions of some of the first born of his flock. He brought his
offering with a kind of gladness that Cain found very offensive. “Obviously it
cost him little effort, if he gives it away so easily,” he thought. “Things are
always easier for him.”

But then came the shock. The Lord favoured his brother’s
offering, but rejected his own. And Cain was furious, and the jealousy in his
heart proliferated faster than any seed he had ever sown in the ground. And the
Lord warned him that his anger was unjustified and that he was in grave danger
of committing a terrible wrong. But he was beyond listening, especially to a
god who seemed to favour his brother beyond himself. It was all Abel’s fault! And
in the secret places of his heart he cultivated that bitter crop, jealousy,
anger, resentment, and it came swiftly to fruition.

The day came when he asked his brother to walk with him in
the fields. Abel was eager to take this opportunity to sort things out with his
brother. But Cain had other ideas, and out there, with no human witness, he
killed his brother. He did not know that the very ground bore witness against
the murder of the innocent, and that he would be eating from a bitter crop all
the days of his life.

Monday, November 07, 2016

He was 75 years old when the call came to leave everything he
had known and follow the guidance of an invisible God to a place he did not
know, which would become his inheritance. He was to take his barren wife with
him, and somehow, though they were both already old, he would be the father of
a great nation. And through this absurd choice, which shocked his friends and
acquaintances into scornful laughter, he would somehow become a source of
blessing to all the nations of the earth (what did that even mean?). And so the
old man packed up his whole life and stepped forward into impossibility. By
faith he allowed his whole world to be turned upside down. And when, after the
long hard years of waiting, the child of promise was born to them, he was
willing, at the command of that same God, to lay down the life of that child,
though every promise he had been given was dependent on that child’s life.
Where did he find the strength? His eyes were fixed on another kingdom, a
kingdom which could never fail, whose builder and maker was the Lord.

Another time, another place, another man. This one was eighty
years old, and his life had become a bitter story of failure. It had all
started so well, with his life miraculously spared and his adoption into the
royal family of the very nation that had enslaved and mistreated his people. But
in a moment of fierce anger he had acted impetuously and thrown all his
advantages away. The last forty years had been spent herding the flocks in a
forgotten corner of the desert. But now he was summoned by a miraculous sign to
return to the very place he had fled, to face down the royal power in its
stronghold, and demand freedom for his people> He did not even believe
himself a fluent speaker, yet he was called to declare the impossible before a
king. Where did he find the strength? His eyes were fixed on another kingdom, a
kingdom which could never fail, whose maker and builder was the Lord.

Another time, another place, another man. This one was only
about 33, and he had already put aside all the joys of heaven to walk in the
pain and weakness of humanity. Now, in the middle of the night, he knelt in an
olive grove, and the agony of his submission was so intense that the sweat fell
from him like drops of blood. He knew what lay ahead. He knew that when he left
that garden he would be going forth to face false accusations, jeering crowds,
abandonment, torture and death. “Nevertheless,” he said, “your will be done.”
Where did he find the strength? His eyes were fixed on another kingdom which
could never fail, whose builder and maker was the Lord, and so, for the joy
that was set before him, he walked forward, with deliberate intent, into all
the agony of sin and death.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

No matter how busy he got (and some days were busier than he
had ever imagined could be possible), he always found time for this, time apart
from the throngs around him, time apart from the endless questions, the endless
reports that he must receive with sober judgement, the endless decisions,
significant or meaningless, that he had to constantly make. Here, alone with
his harp, he breathed out the pain, the frustration, the personal hurts and
confusion, and breathed in the love and mercy of his God. Here he was restored,
here the jumbled pattern of his days resolved into sense and meaning. He took
his tears to God, and his anger, and that terrible sense of helplessness which
is the grinding stone for everyone who finds themselves a leader.

Tonight he was pensive, looking back across the years of
battle and bloodshed, and remembering how simple it had seemed when he was just
a shepherd boy, out on the hills with the flocks, and his harp, and the
heartbreaking beauty of God. But what if he turned it around? What if he were the sheep and it was the Lord
Almighty who was his shepherd, feeding him, leading him protecting him? What if
… ?

He ran his hands across the strings, and his fingers found
their joy. “The Lord is the shepherd,” he sang softly into the night air. No,
that wasn’t it, there was a false note there. He faltered, paused and started
again. “The Lord is MY Shepherd,” he sang. Yes, that was better, both the notes
and the meaning rang true. And suddenly the song was flowing, in him and
through him. “I shall not want”, “green pastures,” “still waters” – the words
tripped from his tongue and the music flowed through his fingers. This was it,
these were the words that put flesh and mortal understanding onto the secret
gladness of his faith, clothing it with a form that gave some expression of the
mystery that was his life and breath, the mystery that God would bend down into
relationship with a broken man. He could see how the images fitted: the soul
restored (oh yes!) the righteous path determined.

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” He
paused. What could he say about that? But no, that also was true. He gazed into
the darkness and saw it – “You are with me, your rod and your staff …” He breathed
deeply, but he would not flinch from it. The deeper the pain, the more glorious
was the mercy that carried him through. “You prepare a table before me in the
presence of my enemies.” He remembered the rage of Goliath and the spears of Saul.
He remembered cruelty, and fear, and blood shed far too easily, as if a man’s
life counted for nothing. He bowed his head, unashamed of his tears. But God
had been there, with him, even in the ugliest places. He raised his eyes and
gazed, unafraid, into the infinite darkness of the skies, and, for a moment, it
was as if he saw eternity open, and a glory that negated and washed away every
pain and struggle:

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” It was the song of
his heart, and he would teach it to his people that it might be their song too.

Sunday, October 09, 2016

I stood there, in the great darkness, still making out the
shape of the terrible cross and the shape of my son, my precious, precious son,
hanging there. I couldn’t see it all the time of course. Tears have a merciful
way of blurring our sight. But there are some things love does not allow us to
turn away from, some places that love insists we stay, because sometimes our
presence, and the mute witness of our grief, is the only thing we have left to
give.

It was a long time ago that the ancient prophet had spoken to
me, beholding my newborn son, but his words had been fixed in my heart, and now
I tasted their full awfulness, like I was drinking down wormwood and gall. “And
a sword shall pierce your heart, yours also”, he had said. I had not realised
that this was what he meant, I had thought it fulfilled in the ordinary
pinpricks of life, the growing pains of seeing your child go in ways you had
never expected (though why I had ever thought a carpenter’s shop would be
enough for this miraculously wrought child seems a great foolishness to me
now!) But now I knew that sword, sharp as a Roman gladius, had stabbed into my
vital organs, and twisted them into excruciating agony. The least I could do
was stand there and keep watch, that terrible afternoon, in a place beyond
courage, where only love could hold me there.

I remembered other afternoons, woven of sunshine (had the sun
now vanished forever?), the texture and shape of the life we had shared
together – those early years in Egypt, when nothing but the pangs of exile had
shadowed our lives, the return to Nazareth and the ordinary years (apart from
the odd incident when he had stayed behind in the temple when he was twelve – a
foreshadowing of the day when he would go forth into the world). There was the
wedding in Cana, and the afternoon when I saw him do his first miracle, the
water became wine, and nothing in the world was ever quite the same again. I
remember the crowds that gathered to his teaching, and the endless, endless
parade of the sick and the broken who came to him for healing. None of them
were here now except the women who stood with me, and John, the only one of the
men who remained. In the dreadful darkness we could count our number, and we
were very few. There were no miracles that day, though I had half expected
there would be, only the bitterness of all our hope being laid down in the
grave. How could this possibly be God’s plan?

And there was silence, and there was darkness, and he cried
his last, and all I had left to give my beloved son was a grave borrowed from a
generous stranger. I discovered then that there is a place beyond pain where
one has almost ceased to be human, and there, as it was, I pitched my tent.

But I did not stay there. For on the third day, on the most
beautiful morning of the world, that dreadful afternoon was undone, or, rather,
the emptiness it had carved out was filled and overflowing, with the best wine
which he had saved till last. This was what it was all for – this! For this I
had borne the shamed months of my pregnancy, for this I had endured exile, for
this I had watched my son alienate all the powers of the land, for this I had
stood in the terrible darkness. And I drank deep of a joy from beyond this
world, which had now broken into this world. For my son, who had been dead, was
alive, and now he lives for evermore

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Killing men was all in a day’s work. Like all Romans of his
class he had done his stint in the army and worked his way up the political
ladder. He had been ending men’s lives either with his own sword, or by
commanding the swords of those under him, all his adult life. By definition,
the glory of Rome was what he was there to promote, and any life that did not contribute
to Rome’s glory was worthless by definition, and to be disposed of with no more
thought than you would give to killing a hen that no longer laid. Why should
this time, this man, be any different?

Alright, he didn’t like the hole and corner business of
midnight trials and early morning summons. He was a suspicious man by nature,
and this aroused all his suspicions. What were the Jewish leaders up to? And the
prisoner, now he looked at him squarely, looked nothing like the typical
insurrectionist. In fact, he had probably never been in a real fight in his
life. So what was going on?

There was something he wasn’t being told, and he was in no
mood to be played with, or treated as just a rubber stamp for their internal
problems. Had they forgotten who was in charge? And there was something about
this man, neither cringing nor defiant, but simply standing there, as if he
were not the one on trial at all, that intrigued him. He wasn’t going to sign
off on this one without learning more. He tried sending the prisoner to Herod
when he learned the man was a Galilean, but Herod sent him back. He sent him
off to be flogged, hoping this would settle the matter, but even though the
prisoner returned besmeared with blood and with a crown of thorns on his head
(oddly unsettling to look at, even for an old soldier), the mob from the temple
still weren’t appeased. They told him
that the man was an enemy of Rome, who had declared himself to be a king, yet,
when he questioned the man further, all he would say was that his ki8ngdom was
not of this world (whatever that meant!). Further the man would not respond to
him, and who in such straits would resist either desperately defending themselves
our shouting out their last desperate defiance? This man was different. In fact,
he believed this man was innocent, which normally wouldn’t have worried him too
much any way. But this time, inexplicably, it did.

But the rabble-rousers of Jerusalem were having none of it.
They wanted this man killed, and they threatened to report him to Rome if he
didn’t comply. How could the life of one man, however innocent, however
different, compare to his own career and his family honour? So he gave the
order to have Jesus of Nazareth crucified. But first her ordered a basin of
water to be brought to him, and publically washed his hands of the man’s blood.
But whether he gave him further thought, or whether he ever came to understand
the magnitude of what happened, history does not tell us.

But what history does tell us is that, at that Passover in
Jerusalem, the world was changed forever, and the name of Pontius Pilate, Governor
of Judea, is remembered with infamy as long as the world endures. He had gone
through the forms, but completely missed the heart of the matter. The man he
condemned to death was God Himself, and the blood he shed that day was,
ironically, the only thing that could have cleansed him from the blood-guilt
that no symbolic basin of water could remove. Pilate died in his time and his
burial place is unknown save to the vaguest of legends, but the tomb of Jesus
of Nazareth is empty, and he lives and reigns for evermore.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

He does not hunt to destroy, he
hunts to release mankind from their terrible captivity, and he has been doing
so since the first dawn of humanity. Many despise him, some fear him as the
embodiment of their selfhood’s deepest nightmare, many hide from him under
pleasure or philosophy. But those who have experienced what he can do for them,
the ones he has “caught”, feel only deep wonder, abiding gratitude and tremulous,
overwhelming love.

Each pursuit is its own story. Long
ago there were two who hid in a garden, pitiably attempting to conceal their
nakedness. He would not allow them to hide from him; ruthlessly he called them
forth and made them own what they had done. And on the day that death entered
the world, the promise of life entered also.

There was another, one who had
bound up the deepest longings of his soul with lies, deception and the slick
tricks of a shyster. Ah! that was a long pursuit, through years and across
deserts, luring him with angelic dreams and the dismay of being bested by the
sharp practices of another, until the time came when he could run no further, and the Hunter brought
his flight to a standstill, appearing in the form of a stranger to wrestle with
him and overthrow him.

And there was a woman, a heathen
prostitute, whom he sought in a strange city. She saw him for what he was,
despite the deceptions she lived under, and, being wise and discerning, she
chose to cleave to him and to his people. And she was freed.

There was one who thought that he
could flee the Hunter by taking a ship to the furthest reaches of the known
world, but it was not so easy to escape. There was a mighty storm that
threatened shipwreck, and a mighty fish that swallowed him whole, taking him
down into a darkness where he could not escape the truth any longer.

There were so many of them: the
shepherd boy of confident faith who had to pass through rejection and exile,
then later the revelation of his own deep sin before he was truly free, the man
who had to marry a faithless woman in order to understand the forgiving love at
the heart of the universe, the young boy who was called in the middle of the
night and whose heart was made captive forever.

But there was a greater prey that
the Hunter sought – one that must be overcome in order for true freedom to
occur. And prey’s name was death, and
its power came from sin. But the Hunter knew that it was vulnerable, and how to
overcome it. And he did it by becoming vulnerable himself. He was stripped from
his power and glory, his might and dominion, and became a nothing. And in that
lowly, helpless form he submitted to death and hell, and was taken into the
very depths of their heartland. And there the one who was beaten and mocked,
reviled and tormented, won a victory that was absolute and unimaginable. Death itself
was overcome, and the Hunter returned in triumph.

And still the victorious Hunter
hunts, that the souls of men may be rescued and restored. And still, until this
earth shall end, he comes to set his people free.

Saturday, August 13, 2016

Nobody seemed to have noticed any change in him. There were
moments when he looked at Jesus, or heard the familiar cadences of his voice,
and his heart skipped wildly within him, or his hands shook a little. But
nobody seemed to notice. Though he didn’t want them to notice, it served to
harden his resentment. If they cared about him, if he was really one of them,
wouldn’t they notice anyway? But he had always been the odd one out. The others
were Galileans, he was a Judean. The others seemed content to follow Jesus
around with no concern for where they were heading. They never asked where they
would be in five years’ time, or ten. And Jesus was very guarded about any details
of his plans. Maybe he didn’t have any? Surely the Messiah of God would have a
clear path to victory and no exactly how to build his support? That was the
least a disciple should expect! Meanwhile, a man must take care of himself, and
if that meant taking an extra share from the common purse, well, what was so
wrong with that when they never missed it?

Increasingly, it seemed to him, Jesus was doing the exact
opposite. Every time there was a swell of public support he seemed to
deliberately cut the ground out from under it. Why would God’s Messiah sabotage
the advancement of his own kingdom?

The thought worried at him and would not let go. Was Jesus
really the Messiah of Israel or not? He was aware of the mounting hostility of
the religious leaders he had been taught to revere, and it disturbed him. Shouldn’t the Messiah unite them? Eventually
the strain became too much; action must be taken to resolve it.

So, secretly, he went to the chief priests and arranged to
hand Jesus over to them at a suitable time and place. That should resolve the
dilemma. Either Jesus would be exposed as a sham, and he himself would be in
favour with the winning side, or it would provoke Jesus to reveal his Messianic
powers, and then, after all, he was one of the inner circle, and Jesus would
probably be grateful. Either way, the issue would be resolved. And thirty
pieces of silver would not go astray, either.

But it was hard to play a part in front of men he lived with
so intimately, and the Passover meal together was especially difficult. When
Jesus said, “One of you will betray me,” the stress was almost unbearable. Was
he about to be exposed to his fellow disciples?

No, apparently not. But he was itching to get out of there, to
resolve this thing once and for all, and when Jesus told him to go and do what
he had to do, he knew it was time: time for action, time for decision, time to
throw off the heavy burden of pretence that was weighing him down. He knew
where Jesus was going next, he would be able to lead the temple guards straight
there. After that, it would be out of his hands. Only one last act of pretence
would be required of him, to go up to his former Master and greet him with a
kiss …

He never guessed how that kiss would resonate through the
ages to come. He never guessed how much it would be overshadowed by the eternal
victory his Master was about to win through death and unspeakable suffering. He
never guessed who his Master truly was.

Monday, August 01, 2016

For the young king, it was just another night of pleasure.
His father, with all his conquests, had gathered great riches; now that the
power was his, he intended to make the most of them. What was the point of
having so much if it was just stuck away in storerooms? It was there to be
used, and he used it. Besides, he had to
impress his father’s nobles with his beneficence.

As the wine took hold and the night grew more intense,
another thought took hold. He remembered the golden goblets of Jerusalem that
his father had brought back from one of his conquests. They had been used in
the service of some obscure tribal god, and for some reason his father had
regarded them as special, even sacred. And he had not generally been a
squeamish man. Well, his son would have none of it. This was a new reign, a new
era, and it was time to be done forever with the old superstitions.

He ordered the vessels to be brought to him, and he and his nobles
and his wives and concubines drank from them. But even that was not enough. He
was King of Babylon, and the age of gods was over. He would kill them with
mockery. He rose, a little unsteadily, to his feet, raised his golden goblet
and his voice. “This is a time for new gods. Let us drink to the god of (he
looked around for inspiration) … gold! Let us drink to the god of … silver!”
And with shouts of drunken laughter, his friends took up the game.

But then silence fell. A disembodied hand had appeared, and,
as they watched with mounting horror, it moved, and its outstretched finger
wrote strange words upon the plaster, then vanished. There was no laughter
now. The king’s bravado had vanished, like
wine poured down the drain, and he ordered all the seers and wise men, old
remnants of his father’s reign, to be brought. But none of them could tell him
what the words meant, despite the most extravagant rewards he could offer.

And the king grew even more afraid, and the whole palace was
in uproar.

Then the old queen, hearing the noise, entered the hall and
approached him, and told him of a man who had been chief over all the wise men
in his father’s day, one of the exiles from Jerusalem, a man called Daniel.

So the desperate king called for him, repeated his
extravagant promises, and demanded an explanation. And the old prophet stood
before him and told an old story of his father Nebuchadnezzar and his
relationship to the God of the Hebrews, whom he insisted on calling the Most
High God, a story of pride and repentance.

Then he looked at the king and accused him of a failure to
repent, and told him that, that very night, he had sinned against the Most High
God. He then read out the inscription on the wall, written by that supernatural
hand, and explained it.

God has numbered the days of your reign and
brought it to an end.

You have been weighed in the
balances, and found wanting.

Your kingdom is divided and
given to the Medes and Persians

The king gave Daniel the gifts he had promised, but there
was no joy in it.

That very night the kingdom was taken and the king was
slain.

He never knew that one day there will be another feast,
where every vessel and every guest is sacred to the Most High God, and God
Himself will wipe away every tear, and all the kingdoms of this world will be
no more

Saturday, July 16, 2016

It was late afternoon when we set off on our walk back home.
The sun was in our eyes as we walked westward, away from Jerusalem, but our
heads were so bowed and our eyes so tear-fogged from the sorrow in our hearts
that we scarcely noticed it. All we could talk of was our great grief, still
trying to fully understand the sequence of events, still baffled as to how the
destruction of all our hopes could have taken place so swiftly and absolutely. We
felt as if death itself had taken up residence in our spirits.

Later, when we had discussed it over and over again between
ourselves, we still could not pinpoint the moment when the Stranger joined us. There
was no shock, no moment of making room for him to walk beside us, he was simply
there, and had been already there with us when he asked us what we were talking
about.

Cleopas, though surprised, was carefully polite, “Are you a
visitor to Jerusalem, that you don’t know what things have just been happening?”

“What things do you mean?” asked the Stranger.

Well, we needed to talk about it, so we did. We told him
about Jesus and his greatness, (oh, the irony!), about His capture, sentencing
and crucifixion, and even about the confusing stories the women had told of an
empty tomb and visions of angels who said He was alive. But when some of the
men went they had seen nothing. So what were we to think?

To our amazement he rebuked our unbelief. (Were we supposed
to have believed the unsubstantiated testimony of women?) . Then followed the
most amazing conversation we had ever been part of. We listened, rapt, as he
laid out for us, from the scriptures we had known all our lives, the plainly
revealed truth that the Messiah we had so longed for, and believed that we had
found, had to suffer before he entered
his glory. The one who was the Salvation of Israel (and not only Israel) was
the same who would be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. The one who
would crush the serpent’s head was the one whose heel would be stricken. How
could we not have known that? Yet still we were blind.

We could not get enough of his words, so when we reached
Emmaus we urged him to stay and share the evening meal with us. It was only
when we sat down to eat that our whole world was utterly changed. For the
Stranger took up the bread, gave thanks and broke it, and as he handed it to us
in the ritual that went as deep as life and breathing, our eyes were opened at
last and we saw him at last for who he was – the risen Lord Jesus, the Christ
of Israel and the Saviour of the world. And, as we recognised him, he vanished
from our sight, and for one fleeting, all-transforming moment, we felt as if we
breathed the very air of heaven.

We looked at each other, seeing each other, too, in a whole
new way. “Didn’t our hearts burn inside us as he spoke to us along the way?”
There was no thought now of finishing our meal or settling down for the night.
Instead, energised with wonder, we returned to Jerusalem to tell our story to
our brothers there.

About Me

Mother of two grown up kids,and very long time married, after many years as a full-time mum, then a part-time theological student I'm now trying to be useful in my local church whilst working out what the next step is.I'm passionate about Jesus, treasure the people in my life and dream of being a preacher. I'm a would-be poet, a slightly eccentric cook, and an INFP (which must explain something).
And I'm a pickle: a weird shaped lump of something-or-other, a bit salty, a bit sweet, definitely an acquired taste, preserved by the grace of God and trying to add a bit of flavour to the blandness of modern life.